Yes. Your new car is probably spying on you.
As the world wakes up to exactly what a Tesla's onboard cameras can capture and beam back to their makers, a wider fear has arisen: is your car spying on you?
Systems such as telematics black boxes that record a vehicle's location and how it is driven are commonplace today. Complaints about how that data is fed back to Big Brother seem old-fashioned.
From Tesla's Model Y to the humble Mini, around two million of these data-gathering cars have been registered in the UK over the past five years.
The question is, when will it be impossible to buy a car that can't spy on you.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by fliptop on Tuesday April 18, @01:30AM (16 children)
As long as you can still buy older, used vehicles, the answer is, "never." Plus there's an upside, a couple of months ago I t-boned a woman who pulled out in front of me while I was driving my 1966 Ford F350. She was driving a 2013 Ford Escape. I crushed her driver's door so badly it wouldn't open, and my truck barely had a scratch. The upside? That little scratch cost her insurance company almost $1000.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday April 18, @01:39AM (8 children)
That's not never. That's 20 years tops, until those older vehicles are maintainable only by dedicated enthusiasts who are willing to spend time finding hard-to-find parts. Your average driver doesn't want to deal with maintaining an old vehicle.
Or that's 10 years when said gasoline vehicles are legislated out of existence for environmental reasns at the pace electric cars are replacing traditional ones.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 18, @01:45AM (7 children)
Depends on the models. Maintaining a 30+ year old Mazda Miata or most full size American pickup trucks is pretty easy, huge cheap parts market out there.
Something like a 1960s Jaguar? Yeah, better know or have your own good machine shop to make the replacement bits as needed. Upside? You can probably make better replacement parts than came OEM.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 18, @02:18AM (6 children)
Better replacements is right. For instance, upon figuring out that the hard chrome ("hard", as opposed to the "soft" chrome used for show like on bumpers) on the brake cylinders of an antique had worn through, started to rust, and that was why the brakes were sticking, I tried to find a service to get them re-chromed. Couldn't find any. Then I learned that I could just get replacement parts made of stainless steel. Stainless steel is better than the original idea of chrome plated ordinary steel.
3D scanning and printing can duplicate more and more parts. That has the potential to make "Right to Repair" give the people the right to print entire replacement products. Open source designs could be of considerable value, if it helps avoid hassles with businesses whining that people are violating their intellectual property rights.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 18, @12:18PM (3 children)
My 1999 Dodge RAM brake lines were rusting through... Stainless steel replacements were only $125 in the aftermarket, pre-bent. The tiny differential cost to put stainless in as OE feels criminal to me that they are allowed to use rust-thru brake lines in the first place.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 18, @04:44PM (2 children)
Yeah, they do a lot of penny-wise pound-foolish things like that. I hesitate to attribute it to deliberate and malicious planned obsolescence. There is some of that, I'm sure, but cars have plenty of complexity for engineers to go wrong and choose a less than optimal design. For instance, flathead engines. Overhead valve is the uncontested superior design. For double wishbone vs MacPherson strut suspensions, the advantages are not all on one side, but the MacPherson strut has steadily grown in popularity. One particularly dumb idea was this "lever action" shock. Instead of a telescoping shock with no joints, the shock is offset and is connected to the axle by a mechanical arm with 3 joints somewhat analogous to the shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints of a human arm. Those joints are basically 3 more points of failure.
Another dumb design from the 1950s and 1960s was openings in the hood for the air intake of the heater. Rain can just fall right in and to deal with that, they added steel tubes to route the rainwater over to the sides of the engine bay. There was some justification for it. You don't want air from the engine bay, not in the days before the recirculation of exhaust gases that slipped past the cylinder rings. The earlier design was to simply vent the crankcase into the bay, and those fumes would be what the passengers would be breathing had they gotten the air from there. Even so, they could've taken in outside air from somewhere else. Which brings up another justification. There was a minor mania about providing the freshest air possible for the passengers, and some effort was put into setting up an airflow in the interior. Had vents at the front and rear of the passenger compartment to take in fresh air and exhaust the old air. Somewhat more important to have that when so many more people smoked. Even the lowliest of cars would have such amenities as separate ashtrays for the back seats. They might skimp on giving the passenger side a sun visor, but they'd have plenty of ashtrays!
Another improvement was the move of radiator fins from straight to wavy. Much better heat transference. The transmission, too, saw many improvements, such as, moving the shifter from "3 on the tree" to "4 on the floor". Another is the upgrade from the generator to the alternator.
Look at any manufacturer's cars over a span of a decade or more, and every year, there's little tweaks to make minor improvements here and there. Occasionally, there's a big improvement. The aftermarket has all kinds of improvements, such as better camshafts, tubular headers to replace the cheap, stock exhaust manifold, mag wheels, and materials that are better because they are lighter, stronger, more resistant to corrosion, and so on. Some of them are too costly, true, but many aren't much, and some are even less costly than stock. Manufacturers incorporate many of these improvements.
We still have lots of low hanging fruit. The biggest one may be aerodynamics. Look at the underside of just about any car, and you will see a maze of braces, corrugations, tubing, and so on all dragging in the wind. The reasons why have little to do with engineering.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 18, @05:41PM (1 child)
>but they'd have plenty of ashtrays!
We have a 2002 Merc S430. The back seat passengers each get their own ashtray and cigarette lighter.
My favorite patent story is about power steering. Seems that the inventor of hydraulic assist power steering was a farmer in the Midwest. He had the idea, he cobbled it up onto his Model-T with various tractor bits, he applied for and received a patent, he drove his power steering equipped Model-T to Detroit and visited all the major auto manufacturers seeking to license his patent to them. They all replied: "Very nice, not interested at this time."
The year his patent expired all major auto manufacturers came out with hydraulic assist power steering on their next years' models.
>The biggest one may be aerodynamics.
The late 1970s Porsche 924 paid a bit of attention to aerodynamics, got their Cd down to 0.24 IIRC... of course the more popular way to make cars faster is to just add more displacement in the engines...
It's a twisted system. I can sort-of see Dodge's point: my brake lines didn't rust through for 23 years, on a truck that we sometimes (but not often) drove on salt-water beaches. What percentage of 1999 pickup trucks are still on the road after 23 years? So, the extra $10 in materials cost would have been wasted on all those out-of-service before the brake lines rusted trucks. But... to me, that's the evil crux of the matter right there: it should be easier and more economical to keep those trucks on the road for 25, 50 or more years. Maintenance and repair is so much more efficient than recycling, it's even reflected in the real-world costs of maintaining and repairing older vehicles.
Now, my 1977 Sierra only got 10mpg (highway, city, didn't matter much), and I can see how the 15mpg we get from the 1999 is "worth the upgrade" after 150,000 miles, we've saved 5000 gallons of fuel - about what we spent buying the 1999 truck in the first place (at today's prices...) But, I'd rather have had an (easy, factory supported) EFI replacement for the 4bbl carb on that 77, and possibly a smarter transmission - even though the one in the 99 is still a dumb dog of a transmission, I believe that it's partly to thank for the fuel economy improvement. Some day that 77 would have gotten in a collision, or rusted to a point that it needed a body swap, but that day could have been 20 or 30 years later than when it got replaced with our then-new 99.
I recently did an engine swap in a 1991 Mazda Miata, and being a 1991 it was _relatively_ simple to do, but even that design could have been a lot more supportive of the process - with a more modular wiring harness for starters.
5 or so years back, we rented some kind of maxi-SUV that came with a variable displacement engine, chilled seats, etc. etc. and it was getting consistently 30MPG+ on the highway, and I was impressed. More recently when we went to rent, I see that typical SUV fuel economy is starting to fall sub-20mpg again, color me unsurprised but still disappointed. A couple of years back, Mazda announced all the "new high-tech innovations" they were implementing to improve fuel economy, and it read like a hot-rodder's shopping list from the 1960s: free flow tuned length tubular exhaust headers, resonant tuned intake runners, higher compression ratio, etc. etc. It's all so much B.S. - they've known for decades how to make better, safer, more efficient, longer lasting, lower polluting cars, but the big innovation of the past 20 years has been: critical engine components cast out of plastic: oil pans, radiator tanks, they're probably going for valve covers next - parts that are guaranteed to last 10 years, and guaranteed to fail before 20.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @11:21AM
Look up the story of the guy who invented intermittent windscreen wipers. They didn't bother waiting for it to expire. He sued. He was still sueing people when he died.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Tuesday April 18, @01:34PM
The interesting thing about the right to repair old cars is that any part of a 20 year old car can be legally printed. Any patents must be expired.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 19, @04:55AM
See also Jay Leno's Garage, which now does this 3D-printed replacement thing routinely, for like-new restorations.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 18, @01:41AM (4 children)
I had a 1977 GMC Sierra that got tagged pretty hard in the left side of the box. That insurance payout was enough to put in a new AC system, worth so much more than shiny paint.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 19, @07:05PM (3 children)
False economy, perhaps? How much were the payments for that full coverage insurance, and for how long? THAT is what YOU paid, and I'll bet it was more than an air conditioner.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 19, @09:57PM (2 children)
Well, the insurance I carried on that truck was the minimum legally required liability coverage, and it wasn't my insurance that made the payment because it wasn't me that ran the red light.
I'll agree: insurance is a sucker's game, the house always wins, but in this case: flako runs a red, dents my truck, flako's insurance gives me a check for $1200, me keeps the dent and gives $950 to the mechanics for a new compressor, new evaporator, and R134a conversion and I've got one cool truck (that needed another $100 electric fan added to keep it cool when stuck in traffic...)
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 25, @11:19AM (1 child)
I've always carried liability. Without it, a single screwup could have you in bankruptcy court.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 25, @11:53AM
We have a $1M umbrella policy.
Thing is: in our state when a lawyer demands to know what insurance coverage you have, you are legally compelled to tell them.
So, hypothetically speaking, you could be out on bicycles with your 14 year old, and he could not touch an old woman on the sidewalk, but end up near her scaring her into falling over. Now, it's unclear if the woman actually broker her ankle in that fall - she acted like she did, but she and her husband refused police or ambulance, but did take your contact info. So: was the fall an act and hubby broke her ankle for her after hauling her away in the car? Hard to say. Anyway, in this state where a typical foot amputation results in 2.5 years salary payout from workman's comp (say: $200k, usually less), when there's a "somebody scared me and I fell over and broke my ankle" lawsuit against somebody's minor child who happens to have effectively $1.2M coverage in homeowner's insurance, can you guess what a broken ankle is worth in liability payout?
Attorney for the plaintiff came right out and said: if there weren't insurance, we'd never pursue this. One of many insane sides of decisions by a jury of your peers - that case never went to trial, but the settlement was absolutely decided by the likely outcome of a jury trial.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 18, @03:53PM (1 child)
Unless you're prepared to do a DIY electric conversion or at least make modifications so you can run on moonshine, your never is very much a foreseeable time in the future.
More and more places are starting to legislate a cutoff for making and selling fossil fueled automobiles. Naturally gas stations won't go away overnight, or for several years after that, but as the old cars go out of service, it will start getting harder to fuel and maintain those that are left.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by squeedles on Tuesday April 18, @08:30PM
Actually, it will seem like overnight. Gas stations are low margin operations as it is, and you will see a vicious circle emerge when electrics displace enough gas vehicles to shrink those low margins past a critical point. As stations drop unprofitable pumps, whether or not they replace them with chargers, it will shift folks further towards electrics. It will probably play out over ten years, but will seem much faster because you won't notice until you are deep in the switchover. On the other side, electrics will benefit from the virtuous circle of greater availability, more charging support, more investment, and either economies of scale or network effects.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 18, @01:39AM (1 child)
But: will the computers refuse to function with lens caps on the interior cameras?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 19, @07:08PM
I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday April 18, @01:47AM (6 children)
I have a 20 year old car that doesn't track me. It still drives okay. When it breaks down, if I can't find a car that doesn't spy on me, I was planning on quitting driving altogether and ride the bus.
But here's the ironic thing: in my area, you can't board the bus and pay for the ticket in cash anymore. You either have to use a dedicated bus card or use contactless payment to pay for the ticket when you board the bus. Meaning of course, you can't ride the bus anonymously anymore either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @02:23AM (4 children)
Bicycles & Feet are still fairly anonymous ways to move around, as long as you can keep your face covered (easy in cold weather) and/or out of view of cameras and facial recognition...
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @03:06AM (1 child)
..ps. And of course don't carry a smart phone...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday April 18, @06:57AM
Mine is often in "airplane mode", which turns off RF. I turn it on only if needed, or am expecting a call / text / email.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Se5a on Tuesday April 18, @05:24AM
Or you know, that whole covid thing.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday April 19, @12:33PM
There are also cyclists pedalling around with cameras mounted to their helmets (front and rear-facing). Meant for evidence in case of altercation with cars, etc., but good luck staying out of their field of view while in the same lane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @03:28AM
In DC you can buy a SmarTrip card with cash, load it with cash, and use it on buses or light rail. No identity from what I remember. I would be more worried about facial recognition cameras than the payment method.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @03:25AM
Most require an app. Those that don't require a credit card. And all fast chargers can uniquely identify the vehicle plugged into them. It would be hard to make them accept cash. And if they did they'd surely get broken into - thieves already steal copper from them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jb on Tuesday April 18, @07:32AM
Every company that markets so-called "smart" products should be charged with false advertising. A separate count per unit ever sold.
There is absolutely nothing even remotely "smart" about using a product that's designed to spy on you. Yet another example of Doublespeak at work...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Tuesday April 18, @07:42AM (3 children)
That article might have a valid point of view, but they are ignoring some of the more practical reasons for choosing a car with a black box.
Some of the larger insurance companies here (Europe) offer significant discounts to cars fitted with a black box. They can clearly identify careful drivers (who still might be involved in an accident, which applies to any road user). They also have a clear indication of the manner in which the car was being driven at the time surrounding an accident.
Furthermore, if you have a mechanical problem then it can be easier to prove that the car has not been driven recklessly which, had it been the case, might have contributed to the failure. This has only been tried here in court a few times as far as I know, where in one case a garage was claiming that a second-hand car that they sold 'must have been abused' to result in the breakdown, whereas in fact the opposite was found to be the case and therefore an unlikely contributing factor. The judge in the 2 cases that I have read about supported the claimant's opinion, although it was not cut-and-dried, there was other supporting evidence.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 19, @05:05AM
My insurance company in the U.S. offers a discount for a black box. For my truck that would amount to about $200/year.
However, the black box transmits about 1GB of data per day, via the owner's cell phone.
Would rapidly become a net loss, even if I wanted to be followed around like that.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday April 19, @12:37PM (1 child)
A family member has opted for a 'software-equivalent' option, where their insurer has an app installed on their phone, which monitors routes travelled, acceleration rates, etc. A discount is offered for "safer" driving (however they choose to measure it).
The trouble is: they retired last year. The insurer's just told them that having dropped the commute, they aren't driving enough to be offered a discount. While I can understand the issues with analysing too small a data set, it does feel perverse to be told that you have to be pay more for driving less.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Thursday April 20, @06:57AM
I experienced the exact opposite here in France. They told me that I wasn't driving long distances often (only 1 or 2 visits per year to other members of my family either here in France or in the UK). They reduced my premium by a significant amount. I am with a big-name company.
It appears that there is logic to how the individual insurance companies will react to similar circumstances.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @08:52AM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @11:06AM
Elon is persona non grata so now "zomg! tesla is spying!"
The telemetry has gotten intense on all cars. US ones are to have a kill switch by law. Where was this article when the practice started? Why did nobody care that cars transmitted back your location before? Now it's big news when we can't do anything about it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by squeedles on Tuesday April 18, @01:49PM
A few years back I bought a Chevy, which like all GM vehicles, has OnStar. The dealer was required to sit in the car with me when I bought it, press the button, and initiate service. It came with a six month free subscription, with a 4G hotspot in the car. They wanted an email address, but I refused to give them any billing information. Used the hotspot a few times with my laptop, and they sent me monthly vehicle status reports long after the six months was up. It was a secondary car so my insurance policy had it at a lower yearly milage (6k?, 7k?, I forget)
I was aware that they were getting data from the vehicle, but one year I drove it a bit more and the moment I went five miles over that usage, my insurance company bumped me up to their next higher level. Ironically, COVID then hit, and now my yearly average is WAY below the low level, but curiously, they never bumped me down to the lower level, hmmm.
Anyway, that's the moment I went under the dash and pulled the breaker for the onstar stuff. Took out the (crappy) bluetooth support and the compass, but now if someone wants data from my car they need to jump through more hoops than just sliding twenty bucks to GM.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Goghit on Tuesday April 18, @03:30PM (2 children)
How long has GM had OnStar in its vehicles? That service is creepy af and I'd be very surprised if it isn't tracking and listening to us already.
GM just announced they will be discontinuing Adroid Auto and Apple CarPlay in new EVs. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/gm-confirms-its-dropping-apple-carplay-and-android-auto-from-2024-evs/ [arstechnica.com]
They weren't even subtle about the reasons, somebody said the quiet part out loud and admitted it was to allow them to harvest more data from customers. I keep my vehicles longer than 8 years and there is no way I will pay a subscription to keep access to my data (thanks, Adobe) and pay for their costs to spy on me so this will be the last GM product we buy.
Meanwhile my 1997 F250 dgaf. Pity the rust is quietly eating it.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday April 18, @05:11PM
I'm just mentioning this because I see cars turning into what televisions have already turned into. Fuckem if they're not going to build what I want.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 19, @05:07AM
A while back I went and looked up one of my college roommates, and learned that he holds a bunch of patents used by OnStar.
If I'd had any idea he would do this, I'd have made him live in the garage.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bart9h on Tuesday April 18, @03:48PM
The question is, when will it be illegal to sell a car that can't spy on you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday April 18, @06:16PM
You know they'll always be able to drive the Presidential limo without that stuff. Same goes for any other government. No self-respecting security team would allow a head of state to be driven around in a car that phones home to God only knows where. It follows that other wealthy clients would also want a sweep service, and that on the downscale you'll find mods in Hotrod Magazine or something if you're so inclined. At least in this regard, mass surveillance is likely to be for casuals, which is unfortunately most of us. Security just doesn't seem to sell, at least not real security anyway. My car came with one of those damned noise-maker alarms, and when I asked the dealer to disable it they were like, "our alarm tech is out" and when you ask online they actually treat you like you're asking how to do crimes. Yeah, like anybody has ever called the cops because of those things. Certainly not fast enough to prevent catalytics from being stolen all the time.
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